Technical Field
This disclosure generally relates to a panoramic image reproduction system comprising an image server and a software application on a computing platform which allows for fuller appreciation of the inherent possibilities of wide field of view images. It has a relation to geographical information systems, and specifically to presentation processing of a document wherein the manner of spatially locating some type of annotation is specified.
Description of the Prior Art
Digital media have typically been delivered as separate files which are then decoded and displayed through viewing application software. Most media viewing applications are intended to display the full frame of the media file. In other words, if a movie or still image is recorded as a frame with a given aspect ratio and number of pixels, then this is the image that is displayed. Zooming features in the viewing application then can display a given portion of the image.
In immersive imaging, the image is typically too wide to be seen all at once, because it would appear distorted and includes an excess of detail, so a movable closeup region of interest (ROI) is usually extracted from within the larger immersive image which remains unseen. This approach is typically used in immersive still photography, and more recently, in immersive video imaging. The immersive image can be generated by immersive photography, or by immersive computer graphics rendering, or any combination of the two.
Recently, image and sound files have had metadata included, which gives further information about the media, and its relationship to other information. This leads to more complex media objects, which depend on media viewing applications to decode and interpret them. Recent media standards such as HTML5, MPEG 4 (H.264), MPEG-7, and MPEG-21 include many descriptions of complex media objects. However, these have not yet included the ROI navigation requirement of an immersive viewing application in combination with the fixed playback characteristics of conventional media.
What has been needed is a media viewing application that enables the ROI behavior of immersive imaging in a convenient form for the user, together with the ability to display metadata and other data and image types in a common display platform.